Grocery Hell

It's always a pain doing the holiday groceries - getting the fruit cocktail and cream, the grapes, the ham, the soda...

Everyone figures the day before Christmas is the best day to go, and as a result supermarkets become virtual sardine cans on these days.

We've repeatedly suffered through a few years of this agony, so this year we figured we'd go first thing in the morning, even before the supermarket opens, so there'd be ample parking, and we can enjoy the calm that comes before the storm.

The rest of the world seemed to figure this out this year too.

At 9 am at the grocery near the house, the parking was already full, and there was a mob waiting for the doors to open. And when the doors did open, the mob rushed in and made a mess of the shopping cart bay, where no one could move because the ones who got there first trying to pull out the carts were trapped by the slower ones crowding behind them. Later, the checkout lines would be two dozen deep.